Summary

A global Fortune 500 consulting company was looking for a replacement workplace scheduling solution for its EMEA offices. What originally began as a project to make desk, meeting room and resource booking more user-friendly quickly accelerated into a global office portfolio reduction initiative using HubStar’s dynamic workplace management platform, H₂O. To date, the organization has reduced their global office portfolio by 40%, saving millions in operating costs while improving hybrid employee experience.

Challenges

• Low adoption  of current scheduling solution, damaging workplace connection and collaboration
• Inefficient sharing  of space across offices with reduced square footage and complex hybrid work policies
• Slow, manual changes  to floor plans, hampering portfolio reduction goals

The organization’s previous scheduling solution had not been fully adopted by the EMEA employee base, and lacked the flexibility and scalability required to manage dozens of complex hybrid work policies across hundreds of offices.

Simultaneously, the organization’s global real estate team saw the implementation of hybrid work as an opportunity to minimize costs through portfolio downsizing, whereas other organizations saw hybrid adoption as a challenge. However, a portfolio reduction would significantly increase the ratio of employees to available desks, something the organization’s current scheduling solution couldn’t
accommodate.

What’s more, a portfolio reduction would require constantly altering floorplans, of which the organization had over 400. Every time a lease was renegotiated or spaces were redesigned, large volumes of floorplans needed to be changed. Using the organization’s current space
management solution, editing and converting floor plans to images every time a change happened would require an impractical level of manual effort for space planners and architects.

Daily space management processes would need to be closely integrated with workplace scheduling to manage global occupancy and ensure effective sharing of smaller volumes of space.

The organization’s current solutions didn’t integrate with each other, making this impossible. A new approach, with unified, interoperable solutions built for hybrid work, was needed.

Why HubStar?

• Boosts connection, improves collaboration and optimizes hybrid occupancy
• Rapid editing of floor plans at the speed of hybrid workplace changes
• Interoperable platform combining user-friendly scheduling, space and hybrid data management solutions

The Solution

The organization replaced its existing scheduling and space management solutions with HubStar’s dynamic workplace management platform, H₂O, which combines scheduling, space and hybrid data management in one place.

Using a phased approach, HubStar’s scheduling solution, Connect, was deployed across 6,000 desks and 1,000 meeting rooms within the EMEA region. Built with employees in mind, Connect is so user-friendly that employees require no training. The ease of roll out, traction
and high adoption rates of Connect caught the attention of other offices globally, and quickly became integral to the organization’s portfolio reduction strategy.

After a 12-15 month EMEA pilot, HubStar H₂O was deployed across the remaining global offices, encompassing over 31,000 reservable resources and 56,000 users worldwide, all of whom adopted HubStar Connect.

Through the integration of scheduling and space management solutions in one, the organization could begin rapidly rolling out floor plans with reduced square footage, influencing hybrid occupancy and matching employees to the most appropriate workspaces for an improved workplace experience.

The Result

• 56,000 employees using HubStar Connect
• 31,000+ reservable resources globally with optimized space sharing ratios
• 40% reduction in global portfolio size

HubStar Connect was adopted by 56,000 employees globally. High adoption levels meant that more employees could effectively share fewer desks, meeting rooms and workspaces, accelerating the organization’s reduction in office square footage.

HubStar’s space management solution, Hub, standardized floor plans across the organization. Edits and updates could be made directly within the system and published immediately, rather than converted and reuploaded every time.

The integration of scheduling with space management helped the organization effectively manage the sharing of over 31,000 reservable resources globally and monitor their performance.

The organization now has total visibility into performance of hybrid work policies and popularity of buildings, floors and neighborhoods using HubStar’s intuitive workplace analytics dashboards. Monitoring space performance powers data-driven decision
making, helping the real estate team create more of the spaces employees want most, without increasing square footage.

The organization has saved millions on reduced real estate and operating costs, achieving its initial goal of reducing global office square footage by 40% while improving employee experience and performance.